(Near the end of the match, NBC gave McEnroe 33 total winners, or 22 if you subtract the aces they gave him. I had him already at 23. The same with Connors: they had given him 11 winners with no aces, while I had him already at 12).

McEnroe's winners by set: 6, 9, 10
Connors' winners by set: 4, 6, 2

Strangely, both men had about twice as many winners from ground strokes than from volleys/overheads. McEnroe would have had more volley winners if Connors had returned more serves and approaches.

I did not mark down any of McEnroe's winners as drop volleys; he won the match essentially with power.

McEnroe made 7 service return winners (six off second serves), four of them passes. He made 5 other passes (4 BH), plus 2 lobs (1 BH).

Connors made 2 service return winners, one from each wing, both off McEnroe’s first serve, both passes. He made 5 other passes (4 BH) and no lobs.

Before the final game, NBC put McEnroe at 2 unforced errors, Connors at 14.

McEnroe held in all 11 of his service games and never faced a break point, or even deuce. He broke Connors 7 out of 11 possible times.

McEnroe gave up 11 points on serve and won 83 out of 125 points overall (or 66%).

At 1-5 in the second set, McEnroe had won 80% of his first-serve points, Connors just 51% (per NBC).

At love-2 in the second, McEnroe had won 16 of 27 approaches, Connors 4 of 10 (per NBC).

McEnroe won 44 of 55 points on serve (or 80%). He won 34 of 40 on first serve (85%) and 10 of 15 on second (67%). He won 10 of 10 points on first serve in the third set.

Connors won 31 of 70 points on serve (44%). He won 24 of 47 on first serve (51%) and 7 of 23 on second (30%).

McEnroe served at 72.7%, making 40 of 55 first serves.
Connors served at 67.1%, making 47 of 70 first serves.

NBC had McEnroe at 75%, which works out to 41 first serves, one more than I counted. Steve Flink writes that he made 43 out of 55 first serves (78%), in The Greatest Tennis Matches of the Twentieth Century.

I proofed all 15 second serves I have for McEnroe; they’re confirmed.

Other than these discrepancies, however -- and my ace count coming in lower than NBC's because I counted only clean aces -- my stats agree with all of NBC's midmatch stats and Flink's other stats, including McEnroe's points lost on serve.

(I've edited the original post to reflect only the clean aces; in this match and a few others I had counted some serves barely grazed by the receiver's racquet).

McEnroe's service % by set:
16/21 - 76%
14/16 - 88%
10/18 - 56%

Connors' service % by set:
15/18 - 83%
15/26 - 58%
17/26 - 65%

McEnroe converted 7 of 12 of break points and did not face a break point himself. Of those 12 break points, Connors made his first serve on 9; he was broken five times on first serve and twice on second.

Maskell, Barrett and Bud Collins all commented on how extraordinarily fast the court was playing because it had been baked hard in the heat. Flink writes in his book that the temperature for the final was 102 F.

McEnroe won with straightforward power. With the court playing so fast, and Connors not coming close to challenging him, there was no danger in driving the ball hard and into the corners on all strokes including volleys; no need for drop shots here, or for throwing junk at Connors’ forehand. Since Jimmy likes pace, it made the result all the more impressive.

Maskell said it was the greatest display of tennis on this court that he’d ever seen. It confirmed, he said, what he’d been saying about McEnroe being the best world #1 he’d ever seen in all his years watching tennis.

“I don’t think Rod Laver was ever more devastating against bad length second services than McEnroe is today”, he remarked at one point.

Connors got 4 games, so a comparison could be made with his two losses to Borg here in ’78 and ’79, in each of which he got 7 games. I had been interested to see if McEnroe could match Borg’s 89% success on first serve in the ’79 semifinal. Since McEnroe had the larger margin of victory it would be no surprise if he had higher success than Borg on both first and second serves, and he does on second. His 85% success on first serve is essentially up there with Borg’s. The difference is not large and it’s rare, in any case, to see anyone top 90%. In itself, Borg’s 89% remains surprising given that he did it with a wood racquet (and when the conditions were not as fast).

At some point I’d like to post about McEnroe’s Aggressive Margin, because of all his stats, his total of 2 unforced errors for the whole match might be the most impressive (and it’s the one that I always hear people highlighting in articles or in conversation about this match).

Maskell said it was the greatest display of tennis on this court that he’d ever seen.

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Where can I get a BBC version of this match? I only have the NBC version & its hard to see the ball.

The difference is not large and it’s rare, in any case, to see anyone top 90%.

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do you think any women have done this in major finals(maybe Graf vs Martina at W)? Sorry I don't provide 'pts won on serve' in any of my stats, I don't see how I'd be able to do that, plus winners, serve %, all from just one viewing.

Where can I get a BBC version of this match? I only have the NBC version & its hard to see the ball.

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Adrian has it and the visual quality is much better. The sound is not as good (though maybe better than BBC matches from the 70s), and more and more I see how much sound makes a difference in your impression of how much power was used. I was watching the BBC version and then I put in NBC's and suddenly McEnroe seemed that much deadlier, and the whole match seemed more of an execution. I'm starting to think there are issues here when comparing matches acoss eras, like comparing to Borg's finals (except '78, because the NBC version is available).

but his site says its in PAL??
It also says PAL on a few other matches I wanted to get(Edberg-Stich '91 W, Becker-Edberg '89 FO)

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Are you wondering what PAL is? If you do, it's the european TV-standard as opposed to NTSC in the US. It might not look very good on US equipment. But I am quite sure you can rip the DVD and convert it with some software that can be found on the web and then it will be ok.

Thanks for the stats, krosero. McEnroe gave one of the most rare, brilliant displays of tennis i've ever seen in that match. Thinking back to that day, I can easily say it has been a rare occasion to see anyone else perform that overwhelmingly well in a match (read: taking full advantage of their entire playbook).

I always felt this was the best match I saw Mac play, ever. And, never saw Connors so stymied...maybe when Lendl beat him 0, 0 on clay perhaps. But even then, he seemed more in the match.

But, I remember watching that match in 84, screaming at the TV for Connors to "stay back, stay back"....Mac was just scorching on the returns...

But, I don't think anyone could've touched Mac on that day. So hard to imagine Mac winning so handily after the mega-struggle between them in '82 (which in honesty, Connors should've won more easily)

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Actually yes, I remembered Connors trying to hard to s&v and he was just getting passed on the return or the next shot. I felt that he should have tried to stay back and extend the pts a bit longer. He did not change his gameplan for the entire match.
After that match I immediately bugged my dad to get for me the MAX200G. And I was like 10!

3 of 5 (he won all 3 and suffered no mini-breaks)
3 of 6 (he won all 3)

So only 1 point was lost on first serve over the course of the tiebreaks; not much difference there between the two players. In each tiebreak Connors played one point on second serve and lost it. So the big factor in who won the tiebreaks was McEnroe’s second serve. Mac won the the first tiebreak by winning both of his points on second serve; he lost the next tiebreak, losing 2 of 3 points on second serve.

Over the course of the tiebreaks Mac had 5 unreturned serves (including 3 aces). Connors had 4, and one df.